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Big Brother USA: Surveillance
Via "Tagging, Tracking, and Locating"
Laurel Federbush
Global
Research
Tuesday September 4, 2007
According to the 2005 Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil
Support, "the terrorist enemy now considers the US homeland
a preeminent part of the global theater of combat, and so must
we."
The program of "defense transformation," initiated
by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, included, among other
things, two particular concepts: "persistent surveillance"
and the need to "deny the enemy sanctuary." In military
thinking, these concepts give rise to the need for constant monitoring
of individuals suspected of being terrorists.
There is a special term for that: "Tagging, Tracking, and
Locating." The Defense Science Board’s 2004 Summer
Study entitled Transition To and From Hostilities has a whole
chapter on this, called "Identification, Location, and Tracking
in Asymmetric Warfare." "Asymmetric warfare," incidentally,
refers to war not against other countries but against unconventional
enemies, such as "terrorists." According to the first
paragraph of the Study: "U.S. military forces currently have
a superb capability for finding and tracking conventional war
targets, such as weapons and military facilities. However, these
intelligence assets have a poor capability for finding, identifying,
and tracking unconventional war targets, such as individuals and
insurgent or terrorist groups that operate by blending in with
the larger society."
(Article continues below)
The study suggests: "Tagging individuals and material can
provide a powerful new tool for locating these modern threats.
A tag is defined as something that is attached to the item to
be located and/or tracked, which increases its ability to be detected
or its probability of identification by a surveillance system
suitably tuned to the tag. Tags can be either active (such as
radio-emitting tags) or passive (such as radio frequency identification
[RFID] tags)." It also says: "The technologies for tagging
and associated surveillance represent a very important area for
research and technology development." The report goes so
far as to recommend a "Manhattan Project"-like focus
on tagging, tracking, and locating. (The Manhattan Project was
the effort during World War Two to develop the first nuclear weapons.)
One organization working on tagging, tracking, and locating technologies
is the Technical Support Working Group. The Technical Support
Working Group, or TSWG, is funded by the Department of Defense
and the Department of State, and has many divisions, all of which
do research in counterterrorism technology. One of these divisions
is the Surveillance, Collection, and Operations Support Subgroup.
This Subgroup includes the National Security Agency, the Secret
Service, the FBI, the Special Operations Command, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. One
of its projects is Tagging, Tracking, and Locating, which is sometimes
referred to as "TTL." The Secret Service, in fact, has
been specifically charged by the Department of Homeland Security
with spearheading the use of TTL. The subgroup also works on special
sensor technologies–sensors being frequently associated
with target tracking and other military surveillance applications.
According to this subgroup’s own literature, its programs
are "classified or highly sensitive. Program requirements,
the success of programs, and specific program capabilities cannot
be discussed in an open document."
One of TSWG’s member entities, the Special Operations Command
(SOCOM), has been given power, under the Bush administration,
to engage in counterterrorism actions all over the world. SOCOM
is allowed to operate within the United States under certain circumstances.
According to the SOCOM 2002 Report Layout, the Special Operations
Command "is more heavily involved in Homeland Defense taskings
than originally had been expected, with no let-up in sight."
The Report also observes: "...there is a tendency to suggest
new roles and missions for the American military, and in particular
SOF [i.e. Special Operations Forces] in the Homeland Defense realm."
The Report expressed the opinion that "care must be taken
to avoid diluting SOF’s capabilities by diverting forces
to domestic missions, which other agencies should be performing."
Exactly what these domestic missions are, however, is not public
knowledge.
Another organization working on TTL technology is the National
Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center–Northeast
Region (NLECTC-NE). The NLECTC-NE is actually co-located with
the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Information Directorate,
in Rome, New York, which develops various kinds of surveillance
technology. The fact that these two entities share a location
is no coincidence; in fact, they have a partnership which includes
the transfer of military technology to law enforcement.
Another radio frequency identification project being sponsored
by the military and developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
at least some of whose details are publicly available, is called
"Total Asset Visibility," and it calls for implantable
sensors to be used in American soldiers to monitor their physiological
reactions to warfare and to keep track of location. The Army Research
Office’s Soldier Status Monitoring Project envisions a day
when implantable sensors will enable the military to control soldiers’
physiological reactions from afar. If this kind of dehumanizing
technology is being developed for American soldiers, one can only
wonder what the U.S. government would be willing to do to those
it labels "terrorists."
These tracking methods are dependent on certain radio systems’
being in place.
The Integrated Wireless Network, or IWN, is a project to link
the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and Homeland Security, and
later, the Department of Defense, with one secure, interoperable
communications system. "Interoperable" means, basically,
that all the radio systems and other communications equipment
of one department would be compatible with those of the other
departments and all the personnel of these different departments
could talk to each other without any technological barriers. Development
of the IWN has been assigned to the military contractor General
Dynamics, along with its various subcontractors. Its systems would
be APCO Project 25-compliant, meaning that they would conform
to a set of standards developed by the Association of Public-Safety
Communications Officials - International (APCO) to facilitate
interoperability. The Special Operations Command, it should be
noted, uses APCO Project 25-compliant radios.
The Integrated Wireless Network would operate at 700 MHz, a frequency
that enables it to penetrate walls and buildings easily. Needless
to say, it also penetrates people easily, and there is evidence
linking the 700 MHz frequency to increased risk of cancer.
The Integrated Wireless Network contains an IP backbone, which
enables the operation of a number of wireless surveillance devices
in the 2.4 Ghz range. Given that this is the same frequency range
used by microwave ovens, it is hardly surprising that devices
in the 2.4 Ghz range have been linked in certain studies to cancer
and other health risks.
Zigbee is one of the 2.4 GHz wireless technologies enabled by
the IWN, and it is used in wireless sensor networks, a means of
location tracking. Zigbee, of which the Eaton Corporation is a
chief proponent, is being marketed as a means of tracking cattle,
but it also has the capability for the location tracking of individual
people, which is one of the aims of the Secret Service, a primary
user of the Integrated Wireless Network.
The militarization of U.S. public service agencies, and the co-opting
of public safety radio systems for use as surveillance instruments
to track dissidents’ every move, must be resisted if Americans
hope to retain any degree of freedom or dignity.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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